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Methodius and the hog turned around at once. They heard neither the click of the entrance door nor steps, but they were no longer alone on the landing by the elevators. Next to the mailboxes, above which the mysterious “NUFA – SVENYA!” was scratched on the wall, a tall, very plump girl of about twenty with ash silver hair was standing. In her hands was a triple-decker sandwich so immense that all double burgers in comparison would seem like pitiful undersized objects with a complex. However, the girl was obviously not a bit disturbed by its size. She was conducting with the sandwich like a maestro with his baton, without forgetting to bite off good-sized pieces occasionally. It is worthwhile to add that the girl was in a thick leather jacket and a short skirt. Completing the outfit were tall boots – one red, another black – and bubble bracelets in the form of lizards with eyes of shiny stones.
“Hey you, slammed by a scanner! It seems I ordered you to let go of the boy! If you don’t, I’ll stuff you inside the cable of a busy phone! I’ll have you wandering from one beep to the next! I, Julitta, am telling you this!” the girl repeated, brandishing the sandwich threateningly.
The hog began to snuffle, digesting the complex threat. A whole wrestling match of motivations was launched in his small cranium; however, in the ring the desire to get even with Methodius flattened the possibility of putting in her place the insolent girl with the strange name. “Don’t be in the way! This young criminal punctured two of my outstanding tires!” he growled, shaking Methodius like a pear.
“A whole two tires? Oh, Gloom! My condolences in connection with the loss of the mechanical relative!” Julitta was horrified.
“What???” the hog did not take it in.
“Build yourself a supernatural monument! The road surface will not grow over it!” the girl continued. She was clearly mocking the hog, Methodius, and herself at the same time. Here was some round of shooting.
“The prince’s” scanty eyebrows, angrily wandering towards each other, formed on the forehead a fold like a bulldog. “Go away, fatso!” he bellowed, taking a threatening step towards her. It was not worthwhile to do this, because immediately the girl took a step towards him.
“Who’s a fatso, me? Why are we, heavy people, eternally obligated to listen to this filth? They attempt to vulgarize our kingly proportions by the meanest means! And the main thing, whom do I hear this from? Apollo Belvedere? The handsome man Prometheus? The jock Heracles? Not in the least! From the pitiful crossbreed of a pig with a computer keyboard! A walking cemetery of cutlets! The drain tank for beer bottles, who greases the folds on his diathetic belly with cream!” Julitta was insulted.
The hog started to grunt angrily. The girl, by some mysterious means, had gotten to his sorest point. Dragging Methodius behind him, he threw himself at Julitta. Showing how frightened she was, the girl began to tremble and, after collapsing onto her knees, began to wring her hands. “How horrifying his glance is! What terrible thoughts are concealed under this low pimply forehead! Mammy-nanny, where’s my stiletto? I want to stab myself! At the same time grab a bucket of poison, if the knife, like last time, breaks against my stone heart,” theatrically howled Julitta. She wanted to drop the sandwich for an increase in effect, but she looked at it and thought better of it. “In short, I’m tormented by melancholy and I’ll die in terrible spasms! Consider this an expression of my reproach!” she explained in an ordinary voice.
“What, are you batty, yes? A hysteric?” the hog fearfully asked. His fingers, never closing over Julitta’s hand, gathered empty space. The unpredictable behaviour of the strange person overloaded his grey matter. Must admit, Methodius was not a bit less astonished, although in this match the girl was clearly playing on his team. On a most heart-wrenching note, she suddenly got up on her feet and, having spat with disgust, cleaned her knees.
“How barbaric! You play for them, you try, and you’d think that at least someone would clap! At least one pig! This also concerns you, Buslaev! I’m also a tragic adolescent! Mephistopheles from kindergarten!”
“Buslaev? Where does she know my name from?” Methodius was surprised, hurriedly attempting to recollect whether he had met the girl in school or in the courtyard. Of course not, hardly. Indeed the interpretation that he could simply not pay her any attention faded immediately. Such loud and substantial individuals do not hide behind a cactus, although now and then they take refuge somewhere in a dark corner of an auditorium, concealing a fashion magazine with their knees.
The elevator that arrived with strain threw open its doors. The hog began to push Methodius forcibly into it. The boy attempted to break loose and earned a good punch in the ribs by a fist from behind. “Who are you beating up, support for a bald spot? Are you generally well-informed on what I’ll do with you now?” Julitta asked grimly, and the elevator doors slammed shut much faster than usual. The hog looked around. “He mutilated your car?” Julitta continued. “And, Xerox not finished? Excellent! So I’ll add something still!” Not postponing her threat, she blew on her palm. The sound of broken automobile glass distinctly reached them from the courtyard. Complaining to fate, the alarm began to cry. “Poof! Oh-oh-oh, what vandalism!” Julitta was horrified and blew on her palm again. This time – judging by the sound – it had reached the windshield.
For some reason Methodius did not experience the least surprise. He only thought that if Julitta, instead of blowing on her palm, had made the movement of catching thrown keys and at the same time moved her shoulders in undulation like in Indian dances, the car would flatten in the manner of a hippopotamus-suicide jumping onto it from the Crimean Bridge. “Magic of motion” – it seems it is called. After thinking this, Methodius wondered slightly about his own knowledge.
By then the hog was simply in shock. He glanced with distrustful horror at Julitta, and then, towing the resisting Methodius after himself, he rushed to the street. The glass splinters had barely stopped jumping on the asphalt. The alarm no longer howled, but was only sobbing quietly. The face of the hog changed three or four colours. He was frightened, lost, and enraged. Everything was in disorder in the Oblonsky home. “It’s you… it’s all you, trash! I knew it!” he began to roar.
The ashen-haired girl, who lazily came out after them, made a face, and touched her ear with a long nail, “Calm down, darling! Don’t tempt me unnecessarily with a return of your tenderness! Better to say, cut the cackle!”
“WHAT?! You… you!! I’ll finish you off!!!”
Julitta shrugged her shoulders, “Turn down the sound track, citizen! Of course, it’s necessary to speak up, but not so loud! Well, me, not me – what’s the difference? Is it worthwhile to go into details? From a philosophical point of view it’s all irrelevant!”
The bull was shown a new red rag. The hog flung Methodius away and took a step towards Julitta. His bulging eyes became malicious and wild, as if an entire battalion of scum microbes was lapping in them. “I… Yes you…”
“Calm down, daddy! Heart attack on alert! Oho, it seems they are going to kill me on the spot! Perhaps you’ll kiss me before death, eh, uncle Desdemon? How about a fiery caress? To both burn and sear? Eh, old fax? Or did the battery die?” Julitta lazily asked.
“And do you understand whom you’re dealing with? Whom you’re teasing? I’ll rip out your heart!” the hog croaked hoarsely.
“Ah, if only there were something to be ripped out…” Julitta said quietly. It seemed to Methodius that incomprehensible melancholy flickered in her eyes. But this did not continued for long at all, only up to the moment when the hog, turning, croaked the most overused and worn phrase ever heard, “You have no idea what I’ll do with you!”
“Sounds very promising, pappy! But I already thought that you love to beat up only the young!” The female purred huskily and suddenly, although Methodius was ready to swear that she had not taken a step, she turned out to be right next to them. Her chubby hands with some kind of icy force lay on the unhappy fiancé’s shoulders. “It’s been a very long time since someone among the living has declared love to me! How do you relate to female vampires? I hope they’re to your taste?” Julitta asked with strange significance. Chubby lips moved apart. The hog, like a blind man, sensed wild horror filling his body.
Methodius did not notice what was there beyond the lips, but the auto-maniac started to wheeze and somehow immediately went morally limp. He became like the pig, to which a pensive butcher with a camomile behind the ear arrived at the pen. Smiling bewitchingly, Julitta pulled him to herself, persistently and mockingly demanding a kiss, to which the victim of a fax answered only with a pitiful whimper.
“Look, Met! It seems not everything is well in the Danish kingdom,” she giggled, turning to Methodius. “Every time when I attempt to kiss him, he begins to shake. Stop thundering with your bones, I said! This prosaic detail oppresses me! What, are you deaf, can’t hear?” The auto-maniac despondently bleated that he could hear. The courage left in him was no more than the juice in an empty juice box.
“Then memorize something else in case we meet again some time. Rule number one: don’t be rude to me. Rule number two: my requests have to be received like orders, and orders like natural calamity. Rule number three: my friends are a part of me, and they don’t offend me… Rule number four… Never mind, you won’t be able to violate the fourth rule, because you won’t live till that moment! Go away!” Julitta, with disgust, unclenched her hands. The hog attacked the porch and, without losing time, ran on all fours to the car. Ten seconds had not even passed when the motor roared, and the mutilated automobile dragged itself from the courtyard with the speed of a traumatized tortoise.
Methodius turned to Julitta. The feeling that he had flipped did not forsake him. Reality faded like an old newspaper, and in its place, complete phantasmagoria decisively forced its way with its elbows. Surrealism in the spirit of Salvador Dali.
“Poor devil! I understand him! To see how a witch’s eyeteeth slide forward is not a sight for the nervous. And this regardless that I never frolicked with pure vampirism – I simply met one vampire and learned the technique. It’s not very complex – basic question in the modification of the bite.”
“And did it take long?”
“No, not particularly. I learned to advance the teeth in a month or two! At first it was dreary to train, and then it’s alright,” the ashen-haired one informed him. “Well! Let’s get acquainted!” Julitta stretched out her hand, and Methodius touched her fingers indecisively. He for some reason expected that the hand of a witch would be cold, but it was warm and, perhaps, encouraging.
“Methodius!” he said.
Julitta nodded. “Yes, I know, I know… Good at least that you didn’t say ‘Methodius. Methodius Buslaev!’ One of my acquaintances in glasses, who is now having a ‘great love’ with a certain Russian photo-model, would present himself precisely in this sequence.”
“You know me?” Methodius wondered.
Julitta burst out laughing. Methodius already noticed that she moved from one mood to another with surprising rapidity. If she was not in all of them simultaneously. “Oh, we’re already on informal ‘you’! What can be better than being informal? Treat me with familiarity as much as you want! Okay?”
“Okay,” Methodius said. He again felt uncomfortable. It was not everyday that lady-vampires fell to your lot and asked you to treat them with familiarity.
“I know you, Methodius, and very well. We have been observing you every day of your life. However, only now, when you’re more than twelve, can you learn the truth about yourself. Up to this moment, your consciousness simply could not sustain it. You could die of horror, scarcely finding out who you are and why you came into this world,” Julitta continued with an air of importance.
“A so-so announcement to me!” Methodius thought sourly. Until now, he was certain that he had come into this world without any special purpose. The type: “Hello! May I drop in?”
“And you? You didn’t die of horror? Are you indeed a tiny bit older than me?” he asked without irony.
Julitta’s face suddenly became serious and sad. As if the pain, which Methodius’ question involuntarily caused her, forced her for a moment to remove her mask. “I’m a special case. I had no way out. They cursed me immediately after birth. Besides, the one who did the cursing, his curse had special power… But we’ll not talk about this,” she said and turned away, showing that the conversation was finished and this theme would not be developed further.
“Did you come specially in order to protect me from this character?” Methodius refined his question.
Julitta glanced at the place where the car had been standing very recently and burst out laughing. “Are you serious? To protect you, the very Methodius Buslaev, from this slug? Something I’ll not understand: is this is a funny ha-ha?”
“But he was indeed stronger. And generally he was somewhat malicious,” said Methodius.
Julitta snorted. “Malicious? Him? And what about you, very good perhaps? Who started to puncture the tires first? And as for who is stronger… Delirium! Memorize from this minute and until your brain tissues harden: physical force is nothing in comparison with mental power! You yourself would also have managed if you would exert yourself slightly. You haven’t yet managed your gift by yourself, but this doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Simply this evening was favourable for my appearance. Look, how many coincidences! A lunatic who wants to knock your brains out. The reflection of the moon in the puddle, which you chase with your eyes like chasing a ball. And finally your dream, about which you recently recalled.”
Methodius shivered. He was unpleasantly startled that Julitta knew about the puddle and the dream. He looked around at the empty courtyard, the entrance door, through which already for a very long time – so it seemed to him – no one had entered or left. It was sufficiently absurd, especially if one considered that at this hour dogs would normally fill the grass plots by the building. “Strange… Everything is very strange! It’s possible to think that all this is a plot. As in the theatre,” thought he.
Methodius noticed that the zipper of Julitta’s jacket was undone approximately to a third, and an unusual adornment – a silver icicle on a long chain – had broken loose outside. In passing, he thought that if Julitta now attempted to do up the jacket, then the zipper would cut the chain in two. Such happened to Zozo repeatedly, without considering the stupid incident when Eddy accidentally swallowed her earrings, which she placed in a small vase with candies. Methodius mechanically stretched out his hand in order to repair the adornment, but, after touching the silver icicle, for some reason held it in his fingers. He suddenly noticed that the icicle was behaving extremely strangely: it changed shape and colour, attempted to come over his hand to clothe his palm like a glove, and something elusive inside, more like a cigarette flame glowing in an empty dark room, lit up.
“Hey, what are you doing there with my jacket? A forward type and all that?” Julitta giggled. She looked down, but, after seeing what Methodius was holding precisely, she began to squeal shrilly. Methodius perplexedly let go of the adornment. He was shaken. It seemed to him that the witch, with such skill getting rid of the hog like a soccer ball, would not squeal this way at all, especially over such trifles. Julitta issued two or three additional trills, and then, breathing heavily, took a step back. “What’s with you? This is darc!” she said with horror.
“Well, so?” Methodius asked.
“What do you mean so? DARC!”
“Well?” Methodius asked.
“You don’t understand what this is?”
“Ne-a! An icicle.”
“You’re losing your mind! To touch a darc! So casually take and touch someone’s darc like this! Lunatic! Nuts!” Now, when Julitta had calmed down slightly, admiration was definitely detected behind the fear in her voice.
“And what’s this darc? Why is it necessary? I thought it’s simply a trinket on a chain and some such,” said Methodius.
“Darc – it’s not a trinket. Darc – it’s darc… I don’t know how to explain it! But what you did is more dangerous than if you touched a rattlesnake! Understand?”
“Sort of,” said Methodius.
“Say, how long did you hold it?”
“Not long! Well, about three seconds, maybe five,” Methodius estimated.
“Five sec-conds?” Julitta drawled. “But it’s wildly painful!”
“Painful for you? Sorry!” Methodius apologized.
“No, not for me! It had to be wildly painful for you! You should be rolling on the ground and attempting to bite off your hand in order that the new pain somehow muffles the first! It’s MY darc, you understand? And a STRANGER, i.e. you, touched it! And with naked hands: not a staff, not a sword, not magic. With your hands! Have you considered? Darc can only be removed from a defeated enemy, and not by tearing it off, but by felling him, cutting the chain! And you felt nothing?”
“No… Well, almost. It was not painful, in any case,” refined Methodius, honestly attempting to recall what he had experienced. Curiosity – yes, but there was clearly something else. Something reckless and slightly evil. Something like what he felt, say, when he succeeded in crushing a fly on glass.
“Hmm… The great Methodius Buslaev! Then I, perhaps, understand why…” Julitta began, but, after recollecting, changed the theme. “Well, it’s unimportant… Let’s switch over to business. I came to you not entirely by myself… That is, I came by myself, but they sent me. Someone wants to meet with you personally. How about tomorrow night? Say, 1 a.m.?”
Methodius was uneasy. He was a contemporary teenager, and a contemporary teenager does many things automatically. For example, he does not trust the unacquainted much. And indeed more so he generally does not go to unknown places on a first summon to a meeting with some unknown person.
Julitta, it seemed, reading his thought, wonderfully understood his fears. The little witch raised her head, squinted and ambiguously blew into space. And immediately Methodius felt like cold fingers were closing on his heart. An invisible icy snake was sliding through his blood into his brain. And in the next moment Methodius’ feet took several steps by themselves. He stared at them with horror – the feet did not obey him anymore. They served an alien will. “So!” Julitta said with satisfaction. “And now this!” She raised her hand to the level of her face and, smirking, lifted her fingers. Methodius discovered that his own hand was repeating the same gesture – it rose and lifted the fingers.
“Ah, stop! Stop! I don’t want to!” he shouted. He tried to lower his hand by force, after gripping his wrist with the other hand, but the insidious witch suddenly brought both hands to her neck, grabbed herself by the throat, and began to squeeze it. Moreover, she was clearly doing this carelessly, although with the exaggerated grimace of a man hanging. Methodius started wheezing. Spots spread before his eyes. He was suffocating himself and could do nothing about it. Moreover, in contrast to the insidious Julitta, who was barely squeezing her throat, Methodius’ own hands were suffocating him extremely responsibly.
Only when he, almost choking, fell onto his knees, Julitta, taking pity, let go of her own throat. “Well, that’s it. Enough with you. Get your arms and legs back,” she said. The witch smiled, shook her ashen hair, and Methodius again gained control over his own body. Coughing, he got up and, looking at his hands with distrust, began to massage his throat. “Why did you do it?” he asked.
“Ah, why! I only wanted to show you that if I wish, I could deliver you to this meeting even without your consent. And the most disgusting – I’m being nasty sometimes! To play such a trick on Methodius Buslaev himself!” Julitta languidly said.
“But not this time! You couldn’t!” Methodius announced simply from obstinacy.
Julitta yawned, “Yes, my dear, yes… Although you’re monstrously strong in the magic sense, nevertheless I have more experience. I could force you to do everything I want. Say, to get up to the roof and take a leap down like a swallow. And not simply to leap but to laugh aloud in flight and sing a song about brave pilots…”
“Stop. What fly of humanism has bitten you today?” Methodius asked glumly.
“None. Just that I want tomorrow’s meeting with the one who sent me to be voluntary for you. No one forces you to go anywhere. And generally, the meeting is necessary not so much to me as to you. Do you finally want to find out who you are? Do you want to learn to manage your own gift? Trust me; you’re several times more brilliant than me in the magic sense! After the appropriate development and faceting, it goes without saying, it’s possible to cut out from your magic dozens of witches such as me… Although, of course, they wouldn’t be so charming. Charm is not a dead person, you won’t dig it out of a cemetery,” thinking for a bit, Julitta said more precisely.
Methodius related with distrust to the girl’s assertion that he had many magic abilities. “She’s mixed up something! To make a magician of me is like turning a live elephant into a stopper for the bathtub!” he thought not without regret. “And who sent you? Who must I meet?” he asked.
Julitta interrogatively looked up suddenly, accurately trying to examine something in the air. In Methodius sprung up a sensation that they were not alone here – that right beside them in the void of the courtyard there was still someone else – terrible and invisible. “No. I can’t tell you this for the time being. He… He himself will tell you everything. You will come?”
Methodius swiftly glanced at her. The glow around Julitta was a pale pink. Such a normal, calm glow. Usually a lie from an outsider is like a black hole. The person locks his outlines, instinctively tries not to give off any energy and possibly give himself away, even if he behaves calmly on the outside like a professional poker player. Likely it was possible to trust Julitta. Or, at least to trust her to some degree. “Her energy glow is indeed somewhat very at ease. It’s possible she understood that I know something about this and took measures,” thought Methodius, not devoid of reasonable suspicion. “I’ll think for a bit. He – well this person, to whom I am necessary – indeed can’t show himself to me?” he asked.
“He can do everything. You even cannot imagine how much he can do!” Julitta said with conviction and even with enthusiasm. “But, alas, the mountain doesn’t go to the wise man for a cup of tea. It’s necessary for the same wise man to catch a taxi and go to the mountain. And now some details. We’ll call them bitter prose of life. Do you know Moscow well?”
“Well…” Methodius began.
“It goes without saying, poorly,” Julitta interrupted him. “The majority of Muscovites hardly know their city. Taxi drivers are exceptions. So, tomorrow we’ll wait for you at the old Skomoroshya Cemetery. I didn’t pick the place; therefore don’t be hard on me if it sounds rather dismal.”
Methodius shivered. “Somehow he’s not dragging me to a cemetery!” he said.
“Don’t be disturbed! Graves won’t open up and corpses with scythes won’t interrupt their sleep. Everything there will be all neat and proper. We’re not in a bad movie. And there hasn’t even been a cemetery for a long time. A normal house stands there… Almost a normal house, to be frank. Our office, our residence, our home – call it what you want. Even then I doubt that besides a couple of skulls, there remained anything of Skomoroshya Cemetery under the foundation,” Julitta calmed him.
“Where’s this?” Methodius asked with quite a bit of doubt.
“In the centre of the city. And at the same time monstrously far from Moscow. You see, when the fifth dimension joins the game, the picture of the world changes sharply. A distant object frequently becomes close-by, and the near-by steps aside. For example, Kamchatka and Kremlin turn out to be almost at the same point, and from your nostril, it’s necessary to go on a train for a week to your eyes… In vain you laugh. I, of course, exaggerate, but not so much as it seems to you.”
“Strange… I thought magic buildings are constructed somewhere far away on islands in the ocean, in towns, in the forest, but not here right in the centre of the city!” Methodius said.
“You see, it’s out of necessity. Good for white and black magicians. Their magic in no way depends on moronoids. But we are guards! Some day – and even very soon! – you yourself will understand everything, and then – he-he! – the aimlessly squandered years will kick you like a flock of ostriches. So, tomorrow at one in the morning we’ll wait for you!” Julitta repeated.
“And it can’t be earlier? I doubt that Mother will let me go! She has other plans for me at one in the morning. I should be lying under the blanket and finding out in dreams how to improve my grades,” said Methodius.
Julitta looked at him with compassion. “You’re a strange person…” she said. “You have so much magic power that if you exert yourself a little, there will be smoking ruins on the spot of your building block. I have much less power, but then you yourself saw what I could do! You wish to go out – no mother can stop you. And with one look you’ll chain her to a cliff like Prometheus!”
“But if I don’t want to chain Mother? Did this not occur to you?” Methodius asked unhappily. He could not stand a raid that would affect relatives.
Julitta thought for a second, thrust a hand into the pocket of her jacket and took out a small box. “Take it!” she said and thrust it at Methodius.
Methodius took it. The box turned out to be strangely heavy for its size. On the cover, there was an ambiguous and frightening figure. At first glance, it seemed inoffensive – grape leaves of different sizes and a couple of clusters. But the longer he looked, the more distinctly he realized that these were no grape leaves but someone’s malicious face with swollen eyes.
“Don’t be afraid, it’s… an ancient Icelandic spirit, which kills thieves and the curious. It’s not terrible for you if you’re actually Met Buslaev and not some namesake. You will find a stone inside, and you will see a rune on the bottom of the box. Try to trace exactly the same on the floor of your room… With what? With the stone! Only see you don’t make mistakes, or it’ll be no end to nothing good. When the rune is ready, its outlines will flame up. All it remains is for you to take a step inside and you’ll turn up at our place in an instant. Grasped the essence? Do this tomorrow night after midnight. But not till midnight…”
“And that’s all?” Methodius asked.
“What, too little for you? Trust me: if you draw the rune poorly, it won’t seem little,” Julitta smiled.
“And what’ll happen?”
“Nothing will happen. There’ll be neither flash nor crash. Everything’s quiet and peaceful. But then what’s left of you, it’s necessary to rake into a coffin with a scoop. And where’s the laughter in the hall? Hey, Kislyandii Anufrievich, you’ll at least imitate a smile, eh?”
“I’m mentally smiling,” said Methodius morosely. “And what do I do with the box?”
“Whatever you want. Put stones back in it or pour copper money into it, and then they’ll turn into gold. If you need it – keep it. I still have more!” Julitta dismissed it.
“And who made it, the box?”
“Who? British gnomes! They willingly sell us their wares in exchange for a small quantity of preserved moronoid happiness. True, moronoids become a little sadder, but it’s only for their benefit. Magciety writes protests till it turns blue.”
Methodius hesitated, “What, you trade with gnomes?”
“You can’t imagine how lonely the poor gnomes are underground. All day they hang around in the smithies, search for precious stones in the depths of mountains, and in the evenings sobbed out of idleness like oil-industry workers in the tundra. Not surprising that they’re eager for preserved happiness.”
Methodius opened the box. On the bottom lay a large white stone, inside which an indistinct white fog swirled. Next to the stone rolled a dark wrinkled fruit resembling a prune. “And what’s this for?” he asked.
